Leaders Need To Train Their Minds As Well As Their Bodies

Regular workouts are an accepted part of the successful executive's routine, but much less attention is paid to exercising the brain. (Shutterstock)

Given the developing backlash against the big technology companies and their increasing influence over the lives of individuals around the world, it is easy to forget that they sometimes do come close to living up to their promise of doing things differently. Take, for example, the recent furore within Google over the company's reported partnership with the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence in the development of better targeting of drone strikes. Few other companies would tolerate the sort of dissent that reportedly arose over the issue. In the U.K., a notable example would be the department store and supermarket group the John Lewis Partnership, where employees, called partners, own the business and are known for not being afraid to be critical of management.

That such instances are rare and that the debate at Google made the news - albeit briefly - is evidence that, for all the talk about accountability and teamwork and the adoption of more casual work habits and ways of dress, many organizations remain somewhat autocratic. Leaders are still assumed to have the answers and subordinates are expected to fall in line. But this flies in the face of logic, particularly in a world in which change is constant and unpredictable.

Megan Reitz, associate professor of leadership and dialogue at Ashridge Executive Education, part of the Hult International Business School, believes that both organizations and the individuals within them need to change the way they behave. Her work has increasingly focused on two large projects that she sees as coming together - "mindful leadership" and "speaking truth to power." In a recent interview, she explained that she was really interested in how people encounter each other in workplaces and added that in the next five to 10 years the character of such relationships was likely to become ever more important as society and business faced more ethical issues. There was, she said, a need to "focus on how you change conversational habits. If you want to change how you work you have to change how you have conversations." She acknowledged that this was really hard, especially when the average manager was having to contend with so much change and pressure, but pointed out that it was essential to break out of this cycle of constant busyness.

Mind Time, the book she has written with Michael Chaskalson, a leading mindfulness trainer, attempts to help with this by offering advice on how leaders can train themselves to think and so behave differently. Reitz points out that, while we accept the need to exercise our bodies, we tend to ignore the fact that we can exercise our brains, too. Indeed, she suggests that by using "repetitions just like in the gym" individuals can be markedly effective in reshaping their minds. Just 10 minutes a day spent on a few simple exercises can help develop three key capacities. These are:

Allowing - This is an attitude of kindness and acceptance

Inquiry - This refers to curiosity about the present moment experience

Meta-awareness - the ability to observe your thoughts, feelings and sensations and impulses as they are happening and see them as temporary rather than as facts.

This might sound a little "touchy-feely" for some, but Reitz says that leaders are increasingly engaging with mindfulness, and there is a growing awareness that if it can make a difference in sports - where many athletes openly talk about the psychological aspect of what they do - it can surely apply elsewhere. The point is that by making individuals more open and attentive it should also encourage Reitz's other preoccupation - speaking truth to power. She wants people in workplaces to feel that they have more choices and do not have to just go with the flow. "We just need more people with the capacity for questioning," she adds.

Organizations talk a lot about engagement and fret about the lack of it despite all their attempts to improve matters. But it could be that just by encouraging people to behave and talk as they would outside the workplace they could go some way towards a solution. As Reitz says, "Without dialogue, we extinguish ideas, we cover up wrongdoing, the quality of our decision-making deteriorates and our engagement plummets."

I am a journalist with a special interest in all aspects of management, but especially leadership.